The world-wide proliferation of wireless telecommunications technology presents an opportunity for service providers to profit from an ever-growing demand for convenient, reliable wireless service. As these service providers are well aware, controlling expenses while providing such service poses a significant challenge. Existing wireless service providers meet this challenge by implementing wireless telecommunications networks comprised of mobile switching centers (MSCs) interconnected to base stations. The MSC completes calls between mobile terminals (that is, any mobile station which uses radio transmission) and other parties. These "other parties" may be other mobile terminals or subscribers served by the public-switched telephone network (PSTN). Each base station is associated with a specific geographic region and is an interface between mobile terminals within its region and the MSC.
One consequence of the explosive growth of wireless telecommunications and the emergence of numerous service providers is the deployment of diverse, wireless telecommunications networks. The variety of systems and protocols used by these networks is the cause of complex incompatibility issue which affect performance. More particularly, the incompatibility of existing wireless systems results in the inability to reconcile frame error rates (FER) of multiple base stations serving the same call during a soft handoff situation. This is because wireless service providers set the FER at each base station in accordance with subscriber requirements based on the characteristics of the geographic area in which it is located. For example, base stations in premium service areas (e.g., urban regions and airports) usually have more stringent FER requirements than those in less populated areas. These stricter FER requirements ensure a level of network performance to which the subscriber in the geographic region are accustomed. Alternatively, service providers may choose to provide a lower level of service to achieve greater capacity in areas of high use.
All base stations serving a call should maintain the same FER settings to ensure high quality and power efficient transmissions. It is well known that the FER setting may be enhanced by increasing signal power from the base station to the mobile terminal. Accordingly, if multiple base stations serving the same call operate at different FER settings, it is common for base stations which do not have the strongest radio link with the mobile terminal (i.e., the nondominant base stations) to increase power to the signal (i.e., the forward link gain) transmitted to the mobile terminal for maintaining predetermined FER requirements. The increase in forward link gain is an attempt, on the part of these nondominant base stations, to achieve the FER of base stations with strong radio links to the mobile terminal participating in the call. These increases in forward link gain by nondominant base stations in a soft handoff scenario do not appreciably enhance the transmission quality of the ongoing call. Indeed, such amplification of forward link gain adversely affect the quality of other calls served by nondominant base stations. Unfortunately, current implementations of wireless technology do not address the problem associated with differing FER settings of multiple base stations participating in a soft handoff scenario.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for reconciling FERs among base stations in a wireless telecommunications network.